The Man Inside the Monster
by MistressAli
Summary: 10 years after he is captured, Julian Robotnik is interviewed in prison.


the man inside the Monster

by MistressAli

All Sonic related characters and places are © Archie, Sega and DIC

Nothing made a good story like another interview with Julian Ivo Robotnik. He was an enigma because of the horrible things he'd done and because he always gave such vague reasoning behind them.

"Your kind is dirt." Or "Machinery is superior to flesh," never seemed to satisfy our society's mind.

I honestly never really thought of writing an article on him. I liked to focus on the current events around Mobotropolis. I found the relationship between Queen Sally Alicia and Sonic Maurice to be quite intriguing. They were a huge part of the Freedom Fighter movement 10 years back, during the Robotnik wars. Sally had gone on to accept her duty as queen. Unfortunately, her father had not lived to see her rule for long. He died five years ago. That was a sad day for all. I mean that most sincerely. I know people say the media is cold-hearted, only out for their next story and so, any condolences we give is totally faked. But I, at least, felt a deep pang of sorrow for King Max's death.

Sally continued on, but her lover, Sonic, never wanted to conform. As so he remained a regular citizen of Mobotropolis, living with his Uncle, the renowned Scientist, Charles. It was Charles who helped craft a deroboticizer for the victims of Robotnik's tyranny.

I had written a few articles on Sonic and Sally, and unlike the trolls of the media, who liked to claim Sonic was unfaithful, I found no evidence of that, and I did not speculate on it, either. It was a bunch of bullshit, honestly. Sonic and Sally were as content as a couple could be, because they ACCEPTED each other's choices and because they allowed each other to live as they pleased. I can never see them parting.

Today, however, I'm flying over the boiling ocean, heading towards a crag of rock with the worlds most notorious prison. The Devil's Gulag. And here I will trek down the long steel hallways until I get to one single cell, locked deep down in solitary confinement. This is where they have Dr Julian Ivo Robotnik, the man who was more feared then Death. I hear he's on borrowed time. I heard Queen Sally might be advocating for his execution.

"He may be locked up, but as long as he lives, the danger from him is present."

Just a year ago, there was a sickening case. A boy who was obsessed with the Doctor, who read all of Robotnik's works and studied him extensively over the wire-network...he even formed a club. He sewed an insignia armband, a red scrap with a yellow R and wore it. Wore it out in public...with pride! He wanted to be the next Ivo, he said, and he said he was in the process of building his own roboticizer. He said he'd gone to the Mobius museum so many times to study the roboticizer on display there that he'd learnt how to make one.

They locked him up. I don't blame them.

But still...he never met Robotnik. The danger was not from the man himself, but from the actions of the man, from the memories he'd left behind. And we can't erase memories. No more than we can change history.

History, I sometimes think, is just a way of preparing for the future. We do things so we can look back and know whether we can do them again, or whether they will damn us to repeating mistakes.

So here I was, stepping out onto the rock ground of the Devil's Gulag. The ocean was miles below us (or so it seemed) I got dizzy just staring off at the horizon. I had to lean on one of the guard's arms as he escorted me in.

At the desk, I introduced myself. "Ms Lionel, here to interview Dr Robotnik."

"Oh, another loony reporter, huh?" The man at the desk handed me over the red nametag that would allow me clearance to Robotnik's cell. "You gonna ask him why he did it?"

"No," I said. And he stared after me as I walked off.

Three guards led me down. They were armed to the teeth, full of guns and tasers and radios and clubs. The undisputed fear of Robotnik ran through my veins, but I still found this to be a bit overboard. He was locked in the tightest security possible, what did they think he could do?

At last. I was before his cell. A trembling started in my legs, so I was glad when a guard brought a chair. Robotnik was separated from me by a pane of transparent metal. A speaker in his room brought his voice to me.

The fat man was sitting in a large chair. It was an armchair, which I found nearly laughable, and quickly noted it on my laptop. I was surprised they provided the man with any comforts.

He only rested one arm on the overstuffed armrest. The reason for this, I typed, was because his robotic arm had been removed. He still retained the creepy red-on-black eyeballs and cylinders for ears. I had read from past interviews that Robotnik had been in a horrible accident as a younger man and he had been blinded and deafened. The robotic replacements had served him well, better than the organic originals. I had a robotic left eye myself. An infection as a child had left me blind in that eye. But mine was totally natural; one couldn't even tell it was a fake. My own parents even had forgotten. Sometimes I would pull it out of the socket to amuse my nieces and nephews. They found it delightfully gross.

A smile came unbidden to my face at the sound of their squeals, but it was quickly wiped away by his voice. Oh my yes, it was worse than they described. They had called it oily, snake-ish, deep, gravely, rumbling. I called it soul-cutting...soul-raping, maybe. It was so smooth and yet so...so dirty...that I felt tainted from its mere touch.

"Not many people smile around me," he rumbled. "Did they send a crazy one to interview me this time?" He leaned forward, those horrible eyes piercing into mine. "Is that the plan now; diagnose me as insane and send an insane-asylum reject in to question me? Because we're kindred spirits?" A sickening floor-shaking laugh came from him. "I'm sorry to disappoint. I am the sanest man on this planet."

"It depends on your definition of sanity," I said.

"And how can you define me?" he said. "I am the only one of my kind left, so how can you measure my sanity to theirs and find it wanting?"

"We can measure it to ours."

"You and I..." he made a rasping sound in his throat, as if he were gathering saliva to spit. "Mobians and humans. We are NOTHING alike. I find the comparison to be quite insulting."

"Yes, I know." I wearily tapped on my laptop. There was no need to type now, because I was recording the session into a sound file. So my hands were idle, and restless. "I know how you hated Mobians."

"Hate," he corrected. "HATE."

"Why is that, exactly?"

He sighed, reaching for a water glass. The liquid ran down his chin as he swallowed. "Don't your kind ever tire of that question?"

"It's valid, isn't it? After what you did to us...why is it so strange that we want to know why?"

"Because you exist," he said simply.

"How is that cause to harm us?" I frowned. He was as insufferable as they'd all said. I'd been expecting it, of course, but that didn't stop anger from building up. "How is it, Doctor? Did we ever think of harming your kind because you merely existed?"

"You did." He was perfectly blunt, but offered no examples. I sighed and leaned back in the chair.

"When?"

"Many a time," he said. "But don't think my Empire was for some petty revenge. Many of my kind are also simpletons and I rarely classify myself with them. I will not feel sympathy for them."

I found this to be a good lead-in for my next line of questioning. Most people would find it odd, because I was veering away from the whole accusatory 'why did you do it?' arena.

"What about your closer kin? Your mother, your father?"

He yawned. "I suppose you've read the Clark interview. He discussed those two subjects quite extensively with me."

I nodded, shuffling through files on my laptop. "I have. To be honest, I'm not really interested in them."

"Then why ask?"

"Why not? I could uncover a new gem or two."

"Gems," he scoffed. "I never knew I was such an interest to the scum. Perhaps you'll want to display my corpse in the Mobotropolis Museum as well. I heard that's where they have the original roboticizer."

"They do." My voice was distant, because I was searching for an image file on my laptop. "Ah. Here. This is who I want to talk about. I don't recall anyone ever really mentioning him. Though, I have seen individual articles here and there devoted to him, they're never that detailed. Almost as if he wasn't that important." I turned the laptop around so Robotnik could see the image displayed.

The fat man leaned forward, and when he saw the picture, his eyes narrowed.

I turned it back. "He looks so innocent there. I bet he was easy to corrupt."

"He was a bad seed from the beginning." Robotnik waved his remaining arm dismissively. "It didn't take much coaxing to reel him in."

"Why did you reel him in, exactly?" I turned the picture back, staring at the image of the boy with the skin like a vampire and a pair of the most somber eyes I'd ever seen on Mobian or human.

"He was useful to me. He attended to the everyday affairs of the city, giving me more time to focus on my grand ideas."

"Don't you mean 'grandiose'?" I taunted. The fat man did not rise. I'd heard he had quite a temper.

"So, he wasn't that important."

"Of course not."

I couldn't stop probing. The other reporters would find this line of questioning silly, because who cared about the second-rate lackey of Robotnik's? I didn't, not really, I suppose no one had. But I wanted to focus on this, to draw out emotion from Robotnik, to paint a monster even more horrifying because he had retained goodness and willfully ignored it.

That's worse, isn't it? To know a right and still do a wrong? Robotnik could have done so much good in this world, with his intelligence and ideas...but he didn't.

"He –was- important though," I said, speaking low, trying to creep into his mind. "He was important to you. Personally."

Robotnik leaned forward again, his square teeth exposed as he snarled. "No, as I've told you, the mongrel meant *nothing* to me. He was another cog in the machinery."

"I heard he suffered a lot. I heard you abused him."

He shrugged. "If a cog begins to slow down the rest of the machine, it must be repaired. Beaten back into shape. Whatever works."

"Fair enough," I said, not that I agreed. A cog could be beaten maybe, but not a living thing.

Robotnik smiled at me, creepy and slow. "Does this conclude our session?"

I accessed another image. It was the boy's body. He was lying in the morgue, with an X stitched across his chest from where they'd opened him for an autopsy. I heard they'd preserved his body and kept it locked in the vaults of the Mobotropolis Museum but I had never seen it myself. Museum guests were not allowed down there.

I showed it to Robotnik and he might as well been looking at a picture of a potato. He didn't bat an eye.

"Why did you kill him?"

"After the Doomsday Project failed, as you know, I came back. He was ruling the city in my stead. He thought I was dead, along with the rest of the fools. He thought he could keep me out, but I got in, regardless of his silly robot troops and traps. He begged me for his life."

I turned the picture back, studying the sweep of closed eyelashes on the white face.

"I spared him. But as the years passed I knew him to be conniving against me. We were losing the city on the third year, and he became *weak*. He decided he'd take his chances with the Freedom Fighter's mercy rather then go down in flames with me. I caught him trying to leave."

The autopsy report read: 'Severe bodily trauma led to death'.

"And I killed him." Another gaping yawn echoed in the small room. "Not too many days later, I was captured."

"Defeated."

"Merely captured." He laughed at me. "You Mobians and your quaint ideas of security."

"You're right," I said, startling him. "Your legacy will live on. There was a boy only a few months ago who wanted to follow your path."

"Wonderful," The doctor chortled, steepling his fingers. "Maybe your entire race isn't incompetent after all."

"You beat him to death." My sudden jump back to the previous subject seemed to take him aback.

"Yes," he said, after a moment's pause. "Yes, I did."

"Did he beg for his life?"

I just wanted to see something, some spark of...humanity.

"Oh yes." He chuckled again.

I could only see the worst parts in him. That's all he was then, rotten to the core. That's all I would be able to report, just like all the others before me. I felt like I'd failed, somehow.

"He begged me. He started crying when he knew I wasn't going to let him live this time. That was his trick, you see, to act defenseless and innocent. I should've killed him long before that."

I stood up, closing the laptop. The audio recorder cut off. "Well, I suppose that will conclude this interview."

"So soon?" He grinned. "I must admit, I did enjoy your company. It's always nice to be reminded of my own intelligence."

I turned back. "What do you miss most about Snively?" I asked.

He blinked.

"Well?" I said. "Do you miss him reminding you of your own intelligence? Do you miss the presence of another of your kind? Do you miss being able to hit somebody?"

Robotnik stared at me, then at the closed and ineffective laptop, and then he leaned forward. His voice was rasping and low. I had to lean forward, putting my hands against the transparent barrier, to hear him.

"I miss his laugh. I miss how he used to adore me. I miss catching him sleeping in the command center, because he looked so peaceful."

My mouth gaped open. But there was nothing I could do. I couldn't record his words now. They'd never believe me.

"When I looked down at his body in my hands, I remembered his face the most. He looked free, finally. He was finally free from me. Free from hell."

He leaned back in the chair, smiling coyly. "As am I. It really is quite nice to be away from all the hate...and the fighting. It got old after a while."

"You...You got tired of it?" I asked, pressing my nose to the glass.

"No change makes for a very dull man," he said. "Now...I believe you said this interview was concluded?"

"I...I did."

They'd never believe me. I had to lean on the guard's arm outside, staring at the ground so I wouldn't get dizzy from the ocean view. Water, water upon water, crashing. I replayed the audio on the trip home, hoping to have caught the low emotional inflections as he spoke of his murdered nephew. But no. It was not there. I had botched it.

But I hadn't failed. I had seen what I wanted. A man inside the monster.

I never did write the article. Sonic and Sally were scheduled to get married the next month. I was feverish in gathering information about their wedding and their living arrangements, and the buzz around town, would Sonic become a King? Would he live in the castle? It was all very exciting, so exciting that I forgot about Robotnik.

But in truth...in truth...I didn't forget. I only pretended. My own thoughts disturbed me. I heard them at night. I heard them when I started to type out the interview.

A monster he was, even more horrifying because he'd retained goodness and willfully ignored it. That's worse, isn't it? To know a right and still do a wrong? Robotnik was a monster.

I could not finish the ending of the interview because...I realized that really *was* the most horrifying monster. The person who ignored their goodness, for whatever reason. The fact that it could be SO easy to do so. So easy to ignore it so long that there came a point of no-turning back.

The fact that...any of us could be like Robotnik. Could become Robotnik. Any of us could be a monster.

And nobody wants to believe that.

A/N OMG

1. I bet you were thinking there wasn't going to be any Snively in this. I sure fooled YOU!

2. That was the hokiest ending in the world, wasn't it? ^^


End file.
